


the prince and the clown

by Reishiin



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Arc V Secret Santa, M/M, Medieval AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/Reishiin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakaki Yuuya spends one year as jester to the royal court of the Kingdom of Sawatari.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the prince and the clown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nightfullofstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightfullofstars/gifts).



> ARC-V Secret Santa gift for [Emi](http://didyousayjuhaku.tumblr.com/), who requested Dartshipping medieval AU.
> 
> This started off as a King and the Clown AU, but the movie was so unexpectedly depressing that I rewrote most of the plot. I hope it still works.

 

 

When Sakaki Yushou disappeared without a trace, he took the light of the royal court with him. Since that day, there have been few laughs and even fewer smiles among the courtiers, the servants and the royal family alike. They say that something in the young Prince had gone with the jester, that day, and that since then Shingo had lost sight of the will to serve and the want to bring smiles to people’s faces. Instead, he had grown cruel, arrogant and self-centred...

 

* * *

 

**Summer, Year 932**

 

Arriving at the gates of the capital city just in time for the summer duelists’ festival, the You Show traveling troupe, who have travelled a long distance from a far province. They look around, at the packed and bustling streets, at the scores of  entertainment duelists competing for the attention of the people, hoping to make it big, and Gongenzaka frowns. “Yuuya, I hope you have a plan.”

The boy hearing this smiles coldly, and slides his tinted glasses over his face so that his friends cannot see his eyes. “It’s simple,” he replies. “We mock the Prince.”

They put on a play in the streets about an arrogant young man of unspecified high position who pretends to befriend a rising young duelist, before defeating him in a match and taking his cards. They are careful not to mention names, but the elaborate costuming and hairpieces leave no room for doubt as to who they are lampooning. The crowds gather quickly, drawn by the quality of their performance but also by their audacity, and coins pour into the strategically placed hats as carelessly as rain.

So they eat comfortably and live well for a few days at least. Predictably, however, it is not very long at all before they are captured and brought before the King on the charge of disrespect for the court.

“-- If we can bring back the Prince’s smile,” Yuuya says, with his face hidden behind thick clown makeup and coloured glasses. “May our trespasses be forgiven?”

“You are welcome to try,” the King says.

But looking upon the Prince’s face for the first time, at the serious expression and sharp grey eyes of the boy he has so thoughtlessly mocked, Yuuya feels fear. For three years the Sawatari court has been empty of laughter. Growing up heir to the royal throne, Prince Shingo must have had to navigate the treacherous halls of power and judge for himself which smiles were genuine, and which hid sharp and unforgiving knives. Prince Shingo, Yuuya thinks, will never want for empty luxuries and pretty lies. Perhaps he is already sick to the heart of them. What can a lowly traveling troupe do that would possibly truly delight him?

But it was by Yuuya’s own ill-advised arrogance that it is their lives on the line, now, so he has no choice but to try.

 

“So?” he says, in direct challenge to the Prince, when he has completed the performance. “What do you think?”

The boy’s eyes are hidden behind coloured glasses and his posture is ramrod straight, the only flaw in his countenance the hands tightened behind his back like resolution or fear. It’s like he’s steeling himself for the Prince’s wrath.

But it never comes. Instead, the Prince laughs, and strangely, there is no cruelty in it. “You are right,” he says. “You are right that people applaud me, not because there is any real value in my dueling, but because of my station.” Strangely, his smile is not cruel. He props his head on one hand as he looks at the boy whose expression is hidden behind thick paint and glasses. “You will stay, won’t you? So that I might learn from you the true value of entertainment.”

“Heh.”

The boy draws off the bright-coloured hairpieces and ornamental costume then, to reveal two-toned hair and plain worn clothes. He reaches up to lift the glasses from his face, and although his expression is carefully unreadable, the entire court gasps as they notice the unmistakeable resemblance. “My name is Sakaki Yuuya,” the boy says, “and I would be happy to accept.”

That is the true reason he came here, Yuuya thinks to himself: to entertain the court in his father’s place.

 

* * *

 

Yuuya is not as technically skilled as Yushou Sakaki had been, nor does he have the same staid and assuring presence, but together with Yuzu and Gongenzaka they make up for it in flawless teamwork and the smile that lights up the entire arena.

Off the dueling stage, however, Yuuya is far quieter. He keeps to himself, and rarely initiates conversation, and never removes the tinted glasses from his eyes. That reticence makes whispers circulate through the palace halls. The servants whisper in the halls. They say he’s on a mission to assassinate the King. They say he’s not really related to Yushou Sakaki, and is only claiming the name for the prestige and the luxury. They say he’s just as unreliable as his father, and that one day the court will wake up and find him gone, too...

  

* * *

 

* * *

 

  **Fall, Year 932**

 

“If it’s not too much trouble, I would like to observe your practices,” the Prince says one day.

That night around the dinner table, Yuzu grimaces, and Gongenzaka can’t quite hide a frown.

“Just say it’s a secret, exclusive to entertainment duelists.”

“Tell him there’s nothing to see. No solid vision and no lights, just people running around with cards and looking stupid.”

“Hey,” Yuuya says with his mouth full, gesturing to the heavily laden table. “Having the Prince gawk is really a small price to pay for this kind of life.”

“Then you can do it,” Yuzu replies.

 

When Yuuya goes in search of the Prince the next day to deliver his answer, he finds the Prince practising swordplay in the garden. Yuuya finds himself transfixed by the lines of force, and the way the blades angle and catch the light.

He makes his footsteps heavier to announce his presence. “Oujisama, you use those well.”

“A compliment from the great entertainment duelist, what an honour,” Prince Shingo says. “Truth be told, it’s all for show, and probably useless in a real fight. It’s something your father taught me.”

 _Oh,_ Yuuya thinks. That comes as a surprise. _It seems that the Prince’s interest in performance is genuine._

“So, entertainment dueling,” the Prince continues, oblivious. “Will you teach me, too?”

Yuuya does not lift his eyes. “A Prince should not degrade himself so before the eyes of his subjects.”

“Your father used to say the same,” Shingo replies. “So I will tell you what I told him then: It is not something I intend to perform publicly, but nevertheless, I would like to learn it.” He looks up at the sky with a dreamy look in his eyes. “I think that until I have complete mastery of myself, I cannot truly serve others. That is the reason for which I—what is it, Yuuya? Did I say something…?”

“It’s nothing,” Yuuya says. He’s smiling in that way that means he’s trying not to laugh. The Prince can probably tell that Yuuya is hiding something, but by now Shingo must already be used to the idea that people will never say to his face what they really think. “It’s just, my father used to say-- he strives to entertain the court so that the ruling family will always genuinely believe in the power of people’s smiles. I am glad that he succeeded, at least in that.”

“So, you will teach me, then?”

“--Yes, actually,” Yuuya says. Shingo smiles then, bright and unexpectedly honest, and it warms Yuuya like the winds in the old stories as they wash over desert sand.

 

 

Later, eating dinner in the open-air courtyard with Yuzu and Gongenzaka, Yuuya looks up at the sky like he’s remembering a time when things were simpler. “It’s really naive, isn’t it,” he says, to no one in particular. “Even now, as long as I can make people smile…”

“Don’t get attached now, Yuuya,” Yuzu says.

She says that, but he’s seen her slipping away after practice to meet that servant boy who duels with a Phantom Knight deck and who wants one day to join the army. Yuuya thinks Yuuto is far too serious, but maybe it is freeing too for Yuzu, to not have to fake a smile.

  


* * *

 

One day as he walks through the palace garden, Yuuya notices the Prince sitting up in one of the trees with his back to the trunk one knee drawn up to his chest. Shingo has made a flute from one of the last green leaves of summer, and as he whistles a single note through the leaf, long and high and pure, Yuuya is momentarily struck by its melancholy.

Later, walking beneath the trees amidst the colour-changing and falling leaves, Shingo says, “A Prince will always be alone, you know? I think that I want to wander the world with only my sword and my deck, and perform on my own terms to make people smile—not in order to make me happy, but because I have made them happy…”

 _No one who’s grown up in this place can ever survive out there._ “Your place is here,” Yuuya says, and then leans over to kiss him. It’s really just to shut him up, but to see him flush hotly and start protesting about audacious presumptions in a voice loud enough to carry—Yuuya thinks, it’s worth it.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

  


**Winter, Year 932**

 

As the snow falls thick in the gardens and the courtyards outside, the You Shou troupe huddles indoors with cups of warm wine and a kettle over the roaring wood fire. After many long winters spent in drafty inns on the road, they appreciate having a place to stay that keeps out the cold.

“The Prince has been very hospitable to us,” Yuzu says, and Yuuya nods.

The Prince has let the You Show troupe use the unused living quarters in the east wing of the palace for a practice area, and he has outfitted them with all the furnishings and equipment they need. Sometimes, during less busy periods when they aren’t rehearsing shows back to back, he even joins them.

Yuuya is always at his side, correcting his balance and posture and transfer of weight. The Prince is not naturally given to these things, unlike some of the entertainers Yuuya has met. But he works hard at it, and before long he has attained more than adequacy.

Shingo’s technique may not be perfect, but he can draw the attention of onlookers, and that is more than sufficient for the entertainer’s purpose. He has the flair for the theatrical, anyway.

And when Shingo inevitably misjudges the leap from one beam to the next and falls hard on the ground, cursing heavily, Yuuya just smiles and tells him to try again. Yuuya has never had any intention of warning the Prince that it takes the best performers years to master even the most basic movements of the Action Duel. It’s just funnier to see Shingo complain.

 

* * *

  


Some nights, Yuuya lays his jacket out on the snow beneath the biggest barren tree in the palace garden, and lies down on his back, and looks up at the stars in the sky. Sometimes, Shingo is there with him.

Yuuya has never gone to school, so Shingo tells him about the kingdom’s history, and the myths and legends written in the old books. “Those two stars,” he says, pointing them out in the sky. “They orbit each other. The story goes that they are both masters of dragons, and meet on the moon every two thousand years to duel for the right to wear the title.”

“I think we’ve performed that story before,” Yuuya replies.

Shingo likes to listen to Yuuya’s stories, too. Of the places they have travelled, the crowds they’ve performed to, the sights they’ve seen. “To live off people’s delight, and the charity that they give you for having made them smile-- that is the spirit of entertainment at its purest. What a wonderful life that must be! – What is it, Yuuya? Did I say something…?”

Yuuya is trying and failing to hold back a smile. “It’s nothing, oujisama,” he says. “It’s just, you—“ _You should really be glad that you will never actually have to live such a life._ Instead, Yuuya just leans over, and brushes his lips over the Prince’s smile.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

  
**Spring, Year 933**

The melting winds come slowly, and break apart the frost that settles over the ground. Yuuya drags Shingo by the hand to the duelists’ festival in the capital square, and together they put on an entertainment duel the likes of which the kingdom has never seen.

“Do you hear the cheering, Oujisama? That means you’re a real entertainment duelist now.”

“Am I,” Shingo says, and for a moment there is genuine wonder in his voice. Then, “Of course I am! Nothing less would befit the great Prince Shingo of Sawatari!”

Yuuya turns his face to the cheering crowds, and feels the wind through his hair. The year has passed, not quickly in the least, but in the blurring days and days of the seasons-change. The day Yuuya first arrived, when the sun beat down hot and beads of perspiration had smeared the clown makeup on his face; the cool winds and falling leaves in the palace gardens in autumn, and now, falling from the fingers of the cheering crowd, the first flowers of spring…

“I guess, then, that it’s time for me to go.”

Yuuya looks out over the crowds shouting the name of their Prince, and smiles softly. ”Like I said a long time ago, I came to this court to take my father’s place. Now that you can bring those smiles yourself, you no longer have need of a jester to do that for you.” _Besides_ , Yuuya thinks, _a true entertainer will never remain forever in one place. There are places to go, sights to see, crowds to perform to..._

Shingo frowns, then, his hands clenching in the folds of his cloak, but he doesn’t say anything. It is the first time Yuuya has ever seen him at a loss for words. “Maybe we’ll see each other at the duel festivals,” Yuuya says, to ease the blow he knows must have been dealt.

As they pack up their possessions, already, the east wing of the palace seems empty without them. Shingo thinks that perhaps he will recruit his own entertainers, and start his own troupe. He can open the doors of the palace to aspiring entertainers trying to make it big in the capital. Yes, perhaps this place can be renamed the Sawatari Theatre...

Later that evening as the You Show traveling troupe rides away, bringing with them nothing more than they had when they arrived, except perhaps the weight of memories. Shingo waves them off at the palace gates. He watches until their backs disappear into the light of the setting sun, and smiles.

 

 

 

 


End file.
